


Fine

by afteriwake



Series: In So Few Words [4]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Broken Ichigo, Dead Orihime, Gen, POV Kurosaki Ichigo, not moving on, poor Ichigo, thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:31:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To the world, he had moved on from Orihime's death. Little did the world know he had not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fine

  
_So this is how we fall apart_  
This is how the ending starts  
And when we find we've lost our minds  
We fake what we don't know  
Linkin Park, “What We Don’t Know”  


He was fine.

It had been six months, and to the world he was fine. He had grieved, he had moved on. He was fine. Her death was a sad footnote in his life, but he had moved on. Everyone believed he was fine.

He wasn’t. Not even close.

The only people who had an inkling of just how far from being okay he was was Xcution. And of them, the only one who cared about _him_ was Chad. The others just wanted to get rid of their powers. Well, it had worked. He had gotten his powers back at the cost of theirs. He was supposedly whole again, back to the way he had been before…before _it_ happened.

_He tried to move, tried to flash step. In his head he was screaming at his legs to move faster, to catch her, to stop the horrific scene that was unfolding out in front of him. He pushed himself…he pushed himself to the limit…and then there was a sick thud. And then he got to her. Too late._

He pushed himself still. He wanted to be strong. He had all his powers back, he had Getsuga Tenshou, he had his Hollow powers, and he even had his new Fullbring powers. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted to be so powerful that he could kill Tsukishima. It wasn’t a matter of making him powerless. He wanted to drag him up in the air and let him drop. Push him off the tallest building in Karakura Town. Or better yet, keep his hand at his throat and fly back down, let the man hit the ground headfirst at 60…80..100 times the speed he would fall if he was pushed.

He could do it, too. He was that powerful. And he was that angry, that bitter. He would do it, too, if…well, if he hadn’t gotten to her, if she hadn’t said anything, if she hadn’t died with that damn smile on her face. Every bone in her body was broken, and she shouldn’t even have been alive even the barest bit, but her eyes had fluttered for a moment, and she smiled the tiniest smile, and said three words that hit him like a ton of bricks.

_I love you._

Her last words to anyone on the face of the earth were to him, and they were what Tatsuki later told him she’d been trying to tell him for almost three years. He almost wished she hadn’t said that. He wished Inoue hadn’t said that. He wished he’d caught her. He wished she was _here_ , alive and breathing and carefree and happy and whole, not lying on the ground broken to pieces. He wished so many different things, and in his dream those wishes came true.

In reality, those happy endings were just smoke that wafted through his brain and dissipated when he opened his eyes to the cold morning light.

But today…today he would get revenge. He wouldn’t kill Tsukishima. The Ichigo that Inoue had loved was gone, dead and buried the day she died and he couldn’t save her, but he still respected that she wouldn’t have wanted him to be killed, just as she did not want others to be killed. She valued life, and in her memory, he would spare Tsukihima’s life.

Didn’t mean he wouldn’t leave him in pain, though. Put him through as much pain as he could humanly stand and still live. This new Ichigo was going to be…well, in his own mind he could draw parallels to Aizen’s behavior or Ulquiorra’s behavior, and in his mind he was okay with that. He could do things most people would consider evil or inhumane, but he would only do it once, to this man, and then he would be done. 

And then it would be over, and he could let this new Ichigo disappear and try, try so very hard, to be fine, like the entire world thought him to be. He would try for the rest of his life, try to be the man that she had loved, after he got his revenge.

He just hoped he could.


End file.
